


Delicate Flower

by BadBadBucky



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadBadBucky/pseuds/BadBadBucky
Summary: Every day, Howard packs Vince a lunch and they eat lunch together at the Zooniverse. But for the last few days, Vince has been showing up without a lunch and with a bunch of excuses. When Howard tries to figure out what happened to Vince's lunches, he finds out the Little Man is being bullied and someone is stealing his lunch, and Howard will not let that stand.If you want to hear this story read aloud, you can go here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18sL2h_J05PamurXoT-ejw4PMjW2yLCjp/view?usp=sharing
Relationships: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	Delicate Flower

Howard sat on the bench by the ocelot pit, where he and Vince ate lunch together, every day. He carefully unpacked the contents of his lunch, a turkey sandwich with cream cheese and cranberry sauce, crisps from the fancy deli down the road, pomegranate fizzy drink, and a large peach. He had packed the exact same lunch for Vince. That was their arrangement, Howard was in charge of lunches and Vince was in charge of laundry, each playing to his strengths, Howard took care of the food, and Vince dealt with fabric care.

Vince was running a bit late, and Howard was getting annoyed, but then he spotted Vince walking down Caribou Way with an intense look of concentration on his face. His hands were empty. He reached Howard and sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that they were hip to hip. 

“Alright?” Vince said. 

“Where’s your lunch?” Howard asked.

“Hm? Oh. So there was this flamingo, yeah? And it had lost all its color. Pure white. And it said it needed some pink stuff to fill it back up and make it pink again. So I gave ‘im the fizzy drink, cos it was pink,” Vince said. 

“And what about the sandwich?” Howard asked. “Give that away to a Walrus?”

“No,” Vince said. “It had started to come apart in the bag, and so I took it out to reconstruct it, but then the wind blew it away. Layer by layer. I was chasing a tomato slice down toward Bollo’s cage and saw that the turkey slices had been caught in a tree, so I tried to get the turkey down before a cat that was stuck up in the tree ate it, and then I caught sight of a slice of bread stuck to a lion’s face. I didn’t even try to get it, didn’t want the lion to know it were my sandwich,” Vince said. 

Howard was sure that Vince had probably traded his lunch for a scarf or some reverse fingerless gloves (all finger no glove), and just didn’t want to tell him, but he’d get at the truth eventually. “And the peach?”

“Well, as you can imagine, after the incident wiv the sandwich, I was a bit knackered. So I went to the bear bunkhouse for a quick sleepy, and when I got back, there was a ransom note written on the brown paper bag, saying that the peach was a member of the Stone Fruit Royal Family and that it had been kidnapped by Cherry Separatists and unless I paid five thousand euros, the peach would be executed. I’m skint until Friday, so later I found the peach in the trash with the pit ripped out. Pretty gruesome,” Vince said. 

The story had all of the cadences and imagery of a normal Vince Noir tall tale, but there was none of the brightness or sparkle Howard tended to associate with Vine’s frequent lies. He almost didn’t want to ask about the crisps, didn’t want to force Vince to come up with another fantastical story, when something was clearly wrong. But Vince also did not seem ready to talk about it and their dynamic demanded they finish the joke. 

“And what of the crips?” Howard said. 

“Traded them to Kerouac for a candy necklace,” Vince said. 

Now, Howard absolutely knew Vince was lying. If Vince had acquired a new accessory, there was no way he wouldn’t be wearing it right now, and yet his neck was bare. Howard figured Vince would tell him what was going on when he was ready and so he merely handed Vince half his sandwich and said, “go on then, can’t afford to skip any meals, otherwise you’ll get so skinny you’ll slide down the drain at bath time.”

Vince smiled at him and took a large bite of the sandwich. “Wouldn’t that be brilliant though?” he said, talking with his mouth full and giving Howard a lovely view of half chewed turkey. “What if there was a whole world down there? Of other people who had slid down the drain? And goldfish, and alligators and ninja turtles.” He swallowed the bite and grinned at Howard. “Wouldn’t that be genius?”

“Mm, all sounds a bit dodgy to me. Like there would be a lot of resentment, for the surface dwellers, best not to get involved with that lot, Vince,” Howard said. He removed a knife from his pocket and used it to cut a slice off the peach, he handed the slice to Vince. 

Vince chewed on the slice of fruit thoughtfully. “Yeah, you might be right.”

“Might be? Of course I am. Trust me, don’t trust drain people, don’t you remember what happened to that little boy, got too close to the rain gutter?” Howard said. “The drain people backed up the pipes, sent a mini tidal wave his way.”

“Did he get swept away?” Vince asked.

“No, but the bottom of his trousers got very wet and he tracked water into the house and his mother had a right fit. Let that be a lesson to you, Vince, there are things in this world we just cannot understand,” Howard said with the lofty voice of hard fought knowledge. He unscrewed the cap on the fizzy drink, took a sip and handed it to Vince. 

Howard liked these times best, when it was just the two of them. Exchanging jokes. Laughing. Sometimes he imagined just leaning over and kissing Vince, watching those big blue eyes pop wide with surprise, and the crooked smile that would follow, but he never did, because what if that wasn’t how Vince reacted? What if he got angry? Or laughed? Or worst of all, tried to be kind and let him down easily? The uncertainty would forever keep him from acting, so Howard packed these thoughts away and returned to enjoying lunch with his best mate. 

They finished Howard’s lunch and went about the rest of their day with only the most mild of incidents. A few more days passed, and each day Vince’s lunch was already gone by the time lunch time hit, and Vince always had some reason for it. 

One morning, Howard chopped up fruit for a fruit salad while Vince laid on the floor of the hut, surrounded by felt tips, decorating the paper bags that would eventually hold their lunches. He’d drawn a picture of a fox and a llama holding hands on Howard’s back and was busy drawing hundreds of multicolored stars all over his own paper bag. The only space not covered in stars was the place where he had written his name in large bubble letters. He was humming and had his legs kicked up behind him, every once in a while crossing them at the ankles or clacking the sides of his boots together. 

At that moment, Howard was struck by the most overwhelming feeling of fondness for the Little Man. Even though Vince had opted to draw caricatures of both of Howard’s former animal paramours apparently moving on with each other, and even though there was a mess of clothes on the floor that Vince had insisted he would handle in short order and even though he found a million little ways to drive Howard mad, Howard still couldn’t help the smile that crinkled up his small eyes. 

Howard decided to include a little something special in Vince’s lunch that day. He made sure Vince was still absorbed in his decorating and ducked behind the counter, where he kept his secret sweet stash. Howard didn’t like other people to know, but he had quite a sweet tooth. He thought it was undignified for a grown man to be seen constantly eating sweets, and so he kept them a secret. He also knew that unless they were hidden, Vince would find them and eat them all in one go. He grabbed a bounty bar and hid it under a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to be slipped into Vince’s bag when he wasn’t looking. 

Once again, Vince was late to lunch, and once again, he was empty handed.

“Where’s your lunch?” Howard asked.

“I got hungry and ate it already,” Vince said.

“Did you like the surprise?” Howard said. It wasn’t that he was looking for a thank you or anything, it was just that generally Vince got very excited about sweets.

Vince looked confused for a moment. “Oh, yeah. It was brilliant. Thanks, Howard.” 

Howard ate his sandwich and the baggie full of biscuits. He was just about to start in on his carrot sticks when Vince’s stomach growled loudly. 

“Are you still hungry?” Howard asked.

Vince shook his head. “No. I’m fine.” His stomach growled again. 

Howard gave him the carrot sticks. “Here.”

Vince pushed them back toward Howard. “No, they’re yours. I’m fine.”

“It’s perfectly alright, if you’re still hungry, just eat,” Howard said. 

“No, that’s _your_ lunch,” Vince said. “And you should get to eat it.” He stood up and Howard noticed that Vince’s eyes looked wet. “I gotta go, see ya later, Howard.” Then, he nearly ran off toward the Chameleon Boudoir.

What on earth had that been about?

Howard finished his lunch alone. He looked around for the rubbish bin, but it appeared Fossil had rearranged them again and he would have to learn the new locations. So, he balled up the little baggies and wrappers and stuffed them in his pockets. He’d already decided he would save the brown bag with the illustration Vince had done.

Howard walked down Panda Boulevard and heard Bainbridge holding court in the breakroom down at the end of the corridor. He rolled his eyes. Howard generally avoided the breakroom, it wasn’t like he spent much time with the other keepers, and since he and Vince spent most of their time in the keeper’s hut, there was little reason for him to ever set foot there. 

The last thing he wanted to deal with was Dixon Bainbridge and a pack of zookeepers hungry for entertainment, but with his luck Fossil had probably placed every rubbish bin in the zoo in that one little area. So, unless he wanted to carry garbage in his pockets all day, he was going to have to brave it. 

He saw Bainbridge standing with his foot on one of the chairs, surrounded by a ring of sycophants, with Fossil practically crouched underneath him, telling a story about a run-in with a demonic wallaby in the outback. As he spoke, he munched on a bounty bar. Flecks of chocolate flew from his mouth and splattered on Fossil’s face as Bainbrige spoke, but Fossil didn’t seem to care. 

“So then, I delivered a shao-lin spin kick to the creature’s face, taking its head clean off in one smooth movement,” Bainbridge said. 

Howard had been right, every rubbish bin in the zoo had been crammed into the break room. Howard found one on the edge, far from the madding crowd, and dug the trash from his pockets. He looked in the bin and saw Vince’s lunch bag. It had been torn in half, the lovingly drawn multicolored stars were now discolored with coffee grounds and some other unidentified substance. Howard looked from the mangled bag to the bounty bar in Bainbridge’s hand and instantly knew what had happened to Vince’s lunch. 

Anger descended on Howard like a dark cloud. Bainbridge had stolen Vince’s lunch. He _had_ been stealing Vince’s lunches for the better part of a week. This was completely unacceptable. When Howard was angry, he mouth tended to get ahead of his brain, which was why he found himself turning toward the group and shouting, “Bainbridge!”

Bainbridge stopped his story and turned to Howard. “What do you want, Moon?”

“That belongs to Vince,” Howard said, pointing at the half eaten bounty bar. 

“Who’s Vince?” Bainbridge asked. 

“My mate, with the haircut,” Howard said. 

Bainbridge stared at him blankly. 

“With the big eyes? And the nose that looks broken but hasn’t been? Luminous skin?” Howard asked.

“Oh, right, your ugly wife. What of it?” Bainbrdige said, taking another bite of the bar. 

“What of it?” Howard spluttered. “What of it? You can’t just go around stealing people’s lunches, we’re not 12.” 

“And yet I did,” Bainbridge said. “What are you going to do about it?” He pushed the rest of the bounty bar into his mouth, and chewed slowly.

“I’ll come at you,” Howard said. He began to navigate the labyrinth of rubbish bins, with his hands held out ready to judo chop Bainbridge into submission, once he reached him. “I’ll come at you like a hippopotamus, relentless and deadly.”

Bainbridge brushed a few crumbs from his mustache and rolled up his sleeves. “Whenever you’re ready, Moon.”

“Howard, don’t,” a quiet voice said.

Howard turned around to see Vince standing in the doorway to the breakroom, his arms crossed. “Vince, I could--”

“It’s fine,” Vince said. “Just leave it alone.”

Howard kept working his way through the maze of rubbish bins, toward Bainbridge. “No, this--this wanker doesn’t just get to--”

“Just leave it!” Vince cried. Howard saw Vince’s cheeks were bright red.

“But why?” Howard asked. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Bainbridge asked. “He knows that I would absolutely annihilate you, delicate flower that you are.” He basked in the laughter of his sycophants. 

“That is just ridiculous,” Howard said. “Vince?”

Vince kicked at the floor with his boot. His gaze cast downward. 

“Vince,” Howard said. 

“You’re a pacifist,” Vince said. “I just didn’t think…” 

“Didn’t think what? That I’d be able to protect you? If you told me what was going on?” Howard asked. “Is that really how you see me? As some delicate flower?”

“Oh dear.” Bainbridge laughed. “It appears we find ourselves in the middle of a lovers quarrel. Let’s leave them to it.” Bainbridge easily weaved his way through the rubbish bins, he body checked Howard with his shoulder. “And Moon, I’m quite partial to roast beef, if you’re trying to figure out what to pack tomorrow.” Howard could hear his booming laughter as Bainbridge and his entourage left down Panda Boulevard, leaving Vince and Howard alone. 

“Howard. I--”

Howard abruptly walked out of the breakroom, heading back to the keeper’s hut. When he reached the hut, he ripped the door open, stepped inside, and slammed it shut. He was so angry he could barely think straight. It was supposed to be his job to protect Vince. 

It had _always_ been his job to protect Vince, ever since they were small. Though, the more he thought about it, all he could remember was a long line of instances in which he had utterly failed. He had failed to protect Vince from that goose at the pond when they were 8. He had failed to protect Vince from that cursed KISS doll when they were 15. And now he had failed to protect Vince from Dixon Bainbridge. 

No wonder Vince thought he was a delicate flower. What had he ever done to convince him otherwise, except talk a big game he had never once backed up. The truth was that his desire to protect Vince far outstripped his ability to do so. Vince would never see him as more than his cowardly friend. 

The anger gave way to a much more familiar emotion. Embarrassment. He was a joke. It was completely laughable that he could have ever stood up to Bainbridge. 

The next day, Howard made three lunches, one for himself, one for Vince, and one for Bainbridge. Perhaps he couldn’t stand up for Vince, but he could at least make sure Vince still got to eat. 

Lunchtime came, and lunchtime went, but Vince never showed up. 

With a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, Howard went to look for him. He walked down Panda Boulevard, back to the breakroom. The rubbish bins had been cleared away but the rubbish people unfortunately remained. Bainbridge and his entourage. 

Bainbridge had two lunch sacks sitting on the table and he was handing out the contents to his groupies. Then, Howard saw Vince over in the corner, hunched over, not looking at anyone, trying to get the cellophane off a packet of saltines. 

Howard’s face twisted into a snarl, a curtain of red lowered over his vision and he remembered no more. 

When he came to, he was lying on the floor of the keeper’s hut with Vince’s large blue eyes mere inches from his face. 

“You’re awake!” Vince said. 

“What happened?” Howard asked. 

“It was amazin’!” Vince said. “You came at Bainbridge like a blackhawk. Total feet of fury. You even got a few good kicks in. Then, a’ course, Bainbridge knocked you out and I had to get Bollo to help me carry you back here. But it was amazing.” Vince attempted to hug Howard, though because Howard was still on the floor, it more amounted to laying down on top of Howard, not that Howard was complaining, at least not this time. “Thank you, for standin’ up for me.”

“But I failed. Again. He took your lunch again and then he knocked me on my arse,” Howard said. 

“I don’ care about none a that,” Vince said. “You got knocked on your arse, for me.” He was still hugging Howard, which meant his mouth was very close to Howard’s ear. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” he whispered. 

“Well, you know, Howard Moon cannot let an injustice stand…” Howard said, retreating back into his bluster in the face of Vince’s sincerity. “Wherever there is tyranny, there too shall I be, wherever the rich take from those in need, I’ll be there.” He was getting on quite a good roll. “Wherever there is--” He stopped talking when he saw the disappointed look on Vince’s face. “What’s the matter?”

Vince smiled, but his eyes didn’t change. “It’s stupid. Doesn’t matter.”

“It might matter,” Howard said. “But we won’t know until you say it.”

Vince hesitated, Howard tried to smile encouragingly but based off Vince’s reaction, he must have missed the mark. 

“Come on, Little Man,” Howard said. 

“I just thought. It’s silly. I thought you went after Bainbridge. For me, you know? But you was just fightin’ against injustice. You’d have done the same for whoever.” Vince climbed off of Howard, he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and turned so his back faced Howard. “Like I said, stupid.” 

Of course, Vince was not being stupid. He was absolutely 100% correct. Howard _had_ stood up to Bainbridge for him, because just once, he’d wanted to succeed in protecting the one person on Earth he cared about most. He’d done it for Vince. He was starting to think he would do anything for Vince.

Howard had already been brave once today, though it had required blacking out from rage. Could he do it again? 

Anything for Vince. 

Howard sat up. The room spun for a moment and then steadied. “Vince?” he said. 

Vince didn’t turn around. “Yeah?” He was trying so hard to sound normal, and failing so miserably. 

“I lied. I did do it for you,” Howard said. “It was all for you.”

Vince faced Howard. “Really?”

Howard nodded. “I couldn’t stand to see you looking so sad, like all the sunshine had been clouded over. I had to do something to bring the sunshine back,” Howard said. Once he had started talking, the rest had fallen out in a tumble, quite a lot more than he had intended, but the momentum was carrying him further along. “And I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner. Like with the goose. I should have, because you’re beautiful and should be protected, I really care about you, and your face is like white...cream, and your eyes are like blueberry cream...cheese and--that’s rubbish, sorry.” He finally managed to stop talking. 

Vince knelt down beside Howard on the floor, his face overtaken by a gigantic smile. 

“And there’s something else,” Howard said, clapping his hands over his mouth. 

Vince’s eyes widened, the way they did on Christmas when, every year without fail, Howard would produce one last present for him. “Something else?”

“More of a question, really,” Howard said. His hands were not doing a very good job of muffling his words. 

Vince adjusted so he was sitting next to Howard on the floor. Hip to hip. “Uh-huh?”

Howard decided to be brave, one more time. “Can I kiss you?”

Vince bit his lip and nodded. “Yeah.”

Howard leaned over and pressed his lips to Vince’s. At first, both of them kept their mouths closed. Howard wasn’t sure how far Vince would be expecting him to proceed, and he truly had not planned beyond this point, he never thought he would get this far. Howard never thought he would find the courage to actually do it. He felt Vince’s lips part and so he followed suit. He could taste the powdery sweetness of Vince’s lipstick. He could feel little huffs of Vince’s breath on his skin. 

They pulled apart. Vince’s wiped at his mouth a bit and smiled at Howard. “Can we do that again?”

“I. Well. Yes,” Howard said. He could scarcely believe his luck. He was going to try being brave again in the future, this first foray was going quite well. 

Vince helped Howard onto the couch, and they kissed for a while longer, ate dinner, did the evening feed, then kissed some more before falling asleep watching an episode of _Colobus._

The next morning, Vince was gone by the time Howard woke up, but he’d left a note that said not to worry about lunch that day. Howard didn’t see Vince all morning, but he showed up at the ocelot pit at their usual lunchtime, and Vince was already waiting. 

Vince stood up and walked over to him. “Alright?” he said, but then without waiting for Howard to answer, he stood up on his tiptoes and kissed Howard on the cheek. 

Howard put his hand over where Vince had kissed him. That was going to take some getting used to, but the good kind of getting used to. He looked around a bit. “Where’s our food?”

“Alright, keep your shirt on,” Vince said. “Or, you know, not.” He winked at Howard. Then dragged one of his fingers down Howard’s chest. At some point he had filed them to points and applied bright red nail polish.

Howard’s cheeks burned bright red. If he thought Vince had been flirty before, this was beyond the pale. He couldn’t help the smile trying to escape from under his mustache. 

“But seriously, where is it?” Howard said. “No more muckin’ about. You know how I get, when I’m hungry.”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “I know better’n anybody. I’m the one who has to deal wiv ya. You nearly broke a guitar over my head the last time we decided to work through tea. I coulda been maimed.”

“And it would have been such a shame to damage that pretty face,” Howard said. He’d never really been all that good at flirting, but judging from the delighted look on Vince’s face, he felt like he had nailed it. 

Vince sat down on the bench. “Come sit with me. You’re gonna love this.” 

Howard sat down. He looked down Caribou Way and saw Bainbridge walking toward them. He was carrying something, and it looked quite heavy. As he got closer, Howard saw it was a large wicker picnic basket. He also saw that Bainbridge had several long and deep scratches on the side of his face, red angry furrows. 

“What d’you want, Bainbridge?” Howard said. 

“I’ve brought lunch for you and young Vince, my way of apologizing, Moon.” Bainbridge said. 

Vince loudly cleared his throat. Howard glanced over at Vince and saw he was casually filing his nails. 

“Howard, I mean,” Bainbridge said, his gaze shifting nervously between the two of them. “My way of apologizing, Howard. Terribly sorry for all the trouble I caused.”

Howard opened the picnic basket. There was a plate of cucumber sandwiches, chocolate truffles, a bottle of expensive champagne. “Well, see that it doesn’t happen again.”

Bainbridge gritted his teeth. “I certainly will.”

Howard eyed the scratches on Bainbridge’s face. “Did I do those?”

Bainbridge flicked his eyes over to Vince for just a moment. “...yes.”

Vince finished filing one of his nails. He blew on it softly, then pocketed his nail file. “Thanks Dixon. That’ll be all.” 

Howard whistled. “Guess I did a bit better than I thought, yeah? Call me a delicate flower.” He stood up and shadowboxed for a moment. 

Vince watched him with growing interest. “Come here, Raging Bull.” 

Howard sat down next to him. Hip to hip. Vince kissed him. 

“Thanks for protecting me.”

**The End**


End file.
